The Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty faced each other for the championship last season. Now they are competing in the playoffs one round earlier, aiming for a spot in the WNBA Finals.
The Liberty have stated that they are using last season’s loss as motivation this year but are not focusing too much on the defeat in four games.
“We’ve got some unfinished business,” New York guard Sabrina Ionescu said. “We’re going to play our best basketball because we’ve got a lot of basketball left in us.”
The Aces were the No. 4 seed but have been performing much better in the last month, winning nine out of ten games before the playoffs and sweeping Seattle in the first round.
Their only loss during that stretch was against New York, but league MVP A’ja Wilson did not play in that game because she was resting her foot. The Aces managed to come back from a 20-point deficit in that game and almost surprised the Liberty.
Neither team is putting much emphasis on that previous matchup.
This is the first time in the league’s history that the finalists from the previous season meet in the semifinals. This wasn’t possible until 2016 when the league changed its format to allow the top eight teams to compete, regardless of conference affiliation.
“Obviously the goal isn’t just to win in the semifinals, so that’s something that’s I think kind of weird because we’re in a rematch of the final series, which is a little bit unheard of,” Ionescu said. “This is a team we have to get through in order to get to a finals again.”
Minnesota and Los Angeles played in the 2018 opening round after meeting in the finals the year before. The Lynx won the title in 2017 but lost to the Sparks in 2018.
